Creative unveils the Zen Vision W player

Last week we published the latest details about Zune presenting the Microsoft gadget as the rival of the iPod. Now we introduce a device that some websites presented as the rival of Zune (for the first or second place in the market?).

We are talking about the Zen Vision W player that was announced yesterday by Creative. Actually it was not only announced because the company has already begun shipping the Zen Vision W player in the North America region.

For this reason it would be more correct to present the Creative gadget as another rival for Zune once Microsoft finally declares its availability.

The latest gadget from Creative features a 4.3\" WQVGA widescreen high resolution TFT LCD and can store audio, video and pictures on the hard-drive.

As for the latter Creative ships two different models: one with a 30GB hard-drive (it costs US$ 299.99) and another with a 60GB hard-drive priced at US$ 399.99. According to Creative the second model can contain up to 240 hours of video, tens of thousands of photographs or 15000 songs.

The player support an impressive range of video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4-SP, MJPEG, DivX4 and 5, and XviD), can play MP3, WMA and WAV audio files and display JPEG images.

It is undoubted that one of the main purposes of this player is to watch movies on a great (for portable devices) display and for this reason Creative signed deals with several content providers.

The Zen Vision W player supports the Amazon Unbox movie download service and TiVoToGo for video content while for the audio part it will be possible to access AOL Music Now, Napster, Yahoo! Music, Soundbuzz and the audio from Audible.com.

It will also be possible to transfer the files directly from the PC using the player support for the USB 2.0 standard.

Creative also added a TV-Out to let us watch the movies or the pictures on a bigger screen by connecting the player to a TV or an A/V projector (cable included). The output will be a 720 x 480 image on a NTSC TV screen or a 720 x 576 image on a PAL TV screen.

Lastly the Zen Vision W player also has a built-in speaker, a FM radio (with the possibility to store 32 selectable stations), a personal organizer and a company flash slot that accepts both type I and type II media.

To read other types of memory card is also available an optional compact flash adapter. The device battery according to Creative supports 14 hours of continuous music playback or 4.5 hours of video playback.